Friday, March 26, 2010

Spock with a Beard

I just started reading a collection of Orwell's essays, and one of the things I love and hate about Orwell is that with every page I turn, I find something I thought and he expressed better and first. So too with billmon's post at Daily Kos on Eric Cantor's latest output of Republican disinformation. Not to recapitulate billmon's post, because he did it better and first, but what he picks up on, and the media falls for every time, is that a statement like Cantor's doesn't make sense, and doesn't need to. All it needs to do is contain the appropriate survey-tested scary keywords for use in soundbites and quotes. And it works every time.